Hope you enjoyed your treats and pleasant e-mails. Now it's time to get back to it.
If you're new to the blog, every Sunday I pass along some links from the week that I think are worth a look. Here are some things to read this week. But if you can, maybe you should just get off the internet and give your mother a call.
LeBon James and the Narrative About Bad Teachers
Another must-read from Jose Luis Vilson
Free Concealed Carry Class Offered to Teachers
Turnout was a little low. There is a level of cluelessness in this news item that is almost charming.
America's Digital Divide
What if the divide is not between haves and have-nots, but between those who carefully monitor their child's use of screens and those who don't?
Important New Study
Jan Ressenger takes a look at a new study that shows how charters have an impact on public schools financially.
Don't Punish Schools Because Johnny Can't Read
Nancy Flanagan on those damned 3rd grade reading policies.
Teacher Un-Appreciation Day
If the whole teacher appreciation thing makes you a little cranky, here's a piece for you.
The State Penalized My School For Trying to Integrate
Steve Singer's school attempted to fix a systemic problem; now they're on the failing list
Cotton Ropes in a Bag
Nobody captures the small moments and details that reveal Life among the Littles like Teacher Tom. How one day at the playground is affected by some pieces of rope.
WV GOP Teacher-Mocker Loses Re-Election
Here's a fun news item. This guy was an asshat about the WV teacher strike, so the teachers took him to school.
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Arguing with Scissors
Some days it seems to me that all of our education problems come down to just one problem-- as a country, we're cheap.
We want an educational system that's a shiny new Lexus, but we want to pay used Yugo prices for it.
Our first educational priority is Do It Cheaply.
The major effect of this priority is the cutting of corners. We can't get the Lexus for what we're willing to pay, and so we have to decide what features to give up, what bits to do without.
All of our education debates can be understood as arguments about where to cut corners. Like this:
The push to keep teacher costs down, either by breaking unions or stagnating salaries or finding ways to turn it into a low skills job (just open the curriculum guide from Pearson and follow the instructions) are all about saying, well, let's spend less on staff. Let's cut that corner.
The test-centered accountability movement is about figuring out which corners deserve to be cut. Let's come up with a hard data number-based judgment that say, "These folks over ere are clearly not up to the task, so let's cut their corner, because clearly they aren't getting the job done. They are the Used Yugo of education, so we should only have to pay used Yugo prices for them."
The free market competition boosters believe that competition-- beautiful, magical, competition-- will goad the Used Yugo to perform like a Lexus in order to keep its own corners from being cut. Wave those scissors at people, say the free marketeers, and they will give you way more for at less.
The privatizers want to claim that they can do more for less, that government run schools are loaded with fat, sloppy corners just begging to be cut, and savvy businessmen can do it (especially if you let them keep some of whatever they trim off).
Charter school fans combine many of these arguments. We'll be more efficient. We'll do more with less. And by allowing strivers to escape from schools loaded with slack and waste, we'll free those schools to have their corners cut to the bone without hurting these deserving children we've put in the charter lifeboat. Because creating more schools, more capacity, more school systems means, as current zero-sum laws stand, that a bunch of corners must be cut.
In fact, too many corner cutting arguments are about which children shouldn't have to ride in the used Yugo. My children, of course, should not. I'm not sure about those children next door, but the children of Those People (you know-- the non-wealthy, non-white ones) definitely don't need to ride in a Lexus. Cut their corner. Cut it good. And if we're going to give resources to the children of Those People-- well, there are a bunch of corners that can be cut, a bunch of corners that Those People don't deserve. Because at the end of the day, it's hard to allocate scarce resources without ending up with racist results.
Do we have to cut all these corners at all? Refomsters have long said, Yes," backing it up with the old "We spend a gazillion dollars on education and yet scores haven't gone up," which is a bizarre argument. It's like saying, "Well, I have offered the dealer $100 for this new Lexus, and he still won't give it to me, so obviously we shouldn't offer him more." The cost of a thing is not based on what you prefer to pay for it.
Most of our education debates in this country are simply arguing with the scissors-- "That guy over there-- that's the guy whose corners should be cut." We could end most of the charter and choice debate tomorrow simply by fully funding all systems instead of making charter and choice and public schools fight over the scraps.
I am not arguing in favor of unregulated profligate spending (though I do wish the reformsters who argued that education is a matter of national defense had followed that thought with "and therefor education must get the kind of unrestrained spending.") But let's face it-- in the USA in 2018, there is zero danger of unrestrained overspending on education. I am arguing for more honest discussions. Let's talk about what it would take to "rescue" all-- not just a select few-- students in struggling schools. If we want choice, let's talk about what it would take to honestly fund all choices. Even if, as I suspect it might, it comes down to saying out loud "Letting rich folks keep their money is more important to us than giving each child a great education," at least saying it out loud will let us argue about the real issue.
As it is, every education discussion starts with an unspoken premise: Since we don't want to spend what it would really take to have a better education system, we're going to have to cut some corners.
It would be great to challenge that premise. Heck, it would be great to acknowledge it so that we could talk about what we're really talking about instead of the topics that we use to mask that premise. Then we could talk about education instead of scissors and corners.
We want an educational system that's a shiny new Lexus, but we want to pay used Yugo prices for it.
Our first educational priority is Do It Cheaply.
The major effect of this priority is the cutting of corners. We can't get the Lexus for what we're willing to pay, and so we have to decide what features to give up, what bits to do without.
All of our education debates can be understood as arguments about where to cut corners. Like this:
The test-centered accountability movement is about figuring out which corners deserve to be cut. Let's come up with a hard data number-based judgment that say, "These folks over ere are clearly not up to the task, so let's cut their corner, because clearly they aren't getting the job done. They are the Used Yugo of education, so we should only have to pay used Yugo prices for them."
The free market competition boosters believe that competition-- beautiful, magical, competition-- will goad the Used Yugo to perform like a Lexus in order to keep its own corners from being cut. Wave those scissors at people, say the free marketeers, and they will give you way more for at less.
The privatizers want to claim that they can do more for less, that government run schools are loaded with fat, sloppy corners just begging to be cut, and savvy businessmen can do it (especially if you let them keep some of whatever they trim off).
Charter school fans combine many of these arguments. We'll be more efficient. We'll do more with less. And by allowing strivers to escape from schools loaded with slack and waste, we'll free those schools to have their corners cut to the bone without hurting these deserving children we've put in the charter lifeboat. Because creating more schools, more capacity, more school systems means, as current zero-sum laws stand, that a bunch of corners must be cut.
In fact, too many corner cutting arguments are about which children shouldn't have to ride in the used Yugo. My children, of course, should not. I'm not sure about those children next door, but the children of Those People (you know-- the non-wealthy, non-white ones) definitely don't need to ride in a Lexus. Cut their corner. Cut it good. And if we're going to give resources to the children of Those People-- well, there are a bunch of corners that can be cut, a bunch of corners that Those People don't deserve. Because at the end of the day, it's hard to allocate scarce resources without ending up with racist results.
Do we have to cut all these corners at all? Refomsters have long said, Yes," backing it up with the old "We spend a gazillion dollars on education and yet scores haven't gone up," which is a bizarre argument. It's like saying, "Well, I have offered the dealer $100 for this new Lexus, and he still won't give it to me, so obviously we shouldn't offer him more." The cost of a thing is not based on what you prefer to pay for it.
Most of our education debates in this country are simply arguing with the scissors-- "That guy over there-- that's the guy whose corners should be cut." We could end most of the charter and choice debate tomorrow simply by fully funding all systems instead of making charter and choice and public schools fight over the scraps.
I am not arguing in favor of unregulated profligate spending (though I do wish the reformsters who argued that education is a matter of national defense had followed that thought with "and therefor education must get the kind of unrestrained spending.") But let's face it-- in the USA in 2018, there is zero danger of unrestrained overspending on education. I am arguing for more honest discussions. Let's talk about what it would take to "rescue" all-- not just a select few-- students in struggling schools. If we want choice, let's talk about what it would take to honestly fund all choices. Even if, as I suspect it might, it comes down to saying out loud "Letting rich folks keep their money is more important to us than giving each child a great education," at least saying it out loud will let us argue about the real issue.
As it is, every education discussion starts with an unspoken premise: Since we don't want to spend what it would really take to have a better education system, we're going to have to cut some corners.
It would be great to challenge that premise. Heck, it would be great to acknowledge it so that we could talk about what we're really talking about instead of the topics that we use to mask that premise. Then we could talk about education instead of scissors and corners.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Happy Charter Week
At first glance, putting Charter School Celebration Week O'Self Congratulations on the same week as Teacher Appreciation Week may seem a bit obnoxious, but I've come to see it as sort of appropriate, a symbol of how the charter business competes with public school teachers for resources and attention. Kind of like putting Fight Cancer Week and Celebration of Tobacco on the same calendar dates, it encourages people to see that there's a fundamental conflict here.
Not that there needs to be. The irony for me is that even though I write extensively about the many ways in which modern charters are detrimental to public education and just plain bad policy, it doesn't actually have to be that way. Charters could work. Charters could be a great addition to the education landscape. But instead, charter fans have chosen to pursue them in the most destructive, counter-productive manner possible. It's like a landscaper says, "Your yard would look so much better with some azalea bushes," and you think that, yeah, they would, but then the landscaper puts the bushes in by ripping holes in the front wall of the house and planting the bushes directly into the water and sewage lines for your home.
So I'm going to celebrate charter week with a little reader of posts that have run here, laying out the ways in which the charter industry has gotten it wrong.
Charter schools are an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. If your complaint about public school is that too few tax dollars make it into actual classrooms, well, charters are generally worse, paying teachers less and administrators more, as well as piling on additional expenses like advertising budgets. Charter marketing has its own set of problems, including a heavy reliance on assertions that just aren't true.
Charters appear to be making segregation worse. Not saying it wasn't already getting bad on its own-- but charters are exacerbating the problem.
Oversight of charters (and the public tax dollars they spend) is rather a mess, with even reformsters arguing about how authorizers could provide decent oversight, even as they argue for few restraints and requirements for charters.
Oversight is needed because so many people have entered the charter biz simply to make a buck. There are so many ways to use charters to fleece the public, including self-dealing real estate entities, plain old real estate operators, get in the authorizing biz, just commit fraud-- the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that every abuse people imagine of for-profits is equally possible, probable and present in non-profits.
Virtually all modern charters are businesses. They may bill themselves as non-profits, but that is a distinction without a difference. They are looking to make money, and that means their own businesses interests are in direct conflict with the interests of students (every dollar spent on a student is a dollar the operators don't get to keep).
Some states, like Ohio and Florida, do charters so very poorly that families often find themselves abandoned by a failed charter. Some are simply trying to give private operators access to public dollars.
Reports repeatedly find that charters have a negative financial impact on public schools. How could they not? A fundamental flaw with the modern charter approach is that it must increase the total educational cost for a community. Until someone discovers a magical way to run ten schools for the same money used to run one, charters will hurt everyone financially. On top of that, some states have tried to make charters more appealing by deliberately gutting their public system.
Oh, and cyber-charters continue to exist even though nobody believes they actually do any good at all (except for investors and lobbyists).
Charters insist on pretending to be public schools. They are not. Really not. Not even if they manage to change the meaning of "public."
Charter operators are good at rattling off the list of public school problems, and much of the time they are not wrong. Systemic racism, lack of resources, serving populations that bring extra baggage to school-- these are all clearly real issues. What is not clear is how charters solve any of these problems.
I'll repeat-- I can imagine circumstances under which I would love and welcome charter schools-- but those aren't thew circumstances we have right now. Right now charters bleed public schools dry, proudly announcing that they have "saved" one child even though they had to poke holes in the boat that still carries ten other children. They are aggressively unaccountable to the public, lacking transparency, serving only a select few, and consuming resources that could be better focused on making the public system better serve all students.
So I'm going to celebrate charter week with a little reader of posts that have run here, laying out the ways in which the charter industry has gotten it wrong.
Charter schools are an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. If your complaint about public school is that too few tax dollars make it into actual classrooms, well, charters are generally worse, paying teachers less and administrators more, as well as piling on additional expenses like advertising budgets. Charter marketing has its own set of problems, including a heavy reliance on assertions that just aren't true.
Charters appear to be making segregation worse. Not saying it wasn't already getting bad on its own-- but charters are exacerbating the problem.
Oversight of charters (and the public tax dollars they spend) is rather a mess, with even reformsters arguing about how authorizers could provide decent oversight, even as they argue for few restraints and requirements for charters.
Oversight is needed because so many people have entered the charter biz simply to make a buck. There are so many ways to use charters to fleece the public, including self-dealing real estate entities, plain old real estate operators, get in the authorizing biz, just commit fraud-- the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that every abuse people imagine of for-profits is equally possible, probable and present in non-profits.
Virtually all modern charters are businesses. They may bill themselves as non-profits, but that is a distinction without a difference. They are looking to make money, and that means their own businesses interests are in direct conflict with the interests of students (every dollar spent on a student is a dollar the operators don't get to keep).
Some states, like Ohio and Florida, do charters so very poorly that families often find themselves abandoned by a failed charter. Some are simply trying to give private operators access to public dollars.
Reports repeatedly find that charters have a negative financial impact on public schools. How could they not? A fundamental flaw with the modern charter approach is that it must increase the total educational cost for a community. Until someone discovers a magical way to run ten schools for the same money used to run one, charters will hurt everyone financially. On top of that, some states have tried to make charters more appealing by deliberately gutting their public system.
Oh, and cyber-charters continue to exist even though nobody believes they actually do any good at all (except for investors and lobbyists).
Charters insist on pretending to be public schools. They are not. Really not. Not even if they manage to change the meaning of "public."
Charter operators are good at rattling off the list of public school problems, and much of the time they are not wrong. Systemic racism, lack of resources, serving populations that bring extra baggage to school-- these are all clearly real issues. What is not clear is how charters solve any of these problems.
I'll repeat-- I can imagine circumstances under which I would love and welcome charter schools-- but those aren't thew circumstances we have right now. Right now charters bleed public schools dry, proudly announcing that they have "saved" one child even though they had to poke holes in the boat that still carries ten other children. They are aggressively unaccountable to the public, lacking transparency, serving only a select few, and consuming resources that could be better focused on making the public system better serve all students.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Gates and Zuckerberg Never Learn
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are going to attempt-- once again-- to change the whole world of education.
Their newly-released Request For Information is looking for "all promising ideas for how to use existing and new knowledge and tools to achieve dramatic results against the challenges we describe." The list of challenges sadly does not include "the repeated failure of rich amateurs to impose their unproven ideas on the US public school system." Instead, the RIF looks at three particular areas. Let's look.
Writing
The problem? College and career success (because we're still flogging that expired equine) are "highly dependent" on "effective" writing skills, which include "evaluation of arguments and evidence, critical and creative thinking about solutions and sources, identifying support for a key idea or process, plus clear and evocative argument making."
Gates-Zuck are going to ignore all of those qualities by basing their argument on NAEP writing test results to argue a lack of proficiency. Mind you, I agree that we have a writing proficiency problem, however, I blame it mostly on the test-driven school movement of the past 18 years. That doesn't make their list of obstacles, which includes a lack of time for sufficient practice and feedback because teachers are overloaded, and while computer scoring of essays "holds promise" (it doesn't), it can't help yet (and it never will). They also blame a lack of "high-quality writing assignments," whatever that is supposed to mean.
Here are the areas they believe "require more exploration"
Evidence-based solutions for writing instruction, including mastery of the "spectrum of skills encompassing narrative, descriptive, expository and/or persuasive writing models," a "spectrum" that I'll argue endlessly is not an actual thing, but is a fake construct created as a crutch for folks who don't know how to teach or assess writing.
New proficiency metrics. Can we have "consistent measures of student progress and proficiency"? I'm saying "probably not." "Can we use technology to support new, valid, efficient, and reliable writing performance measures that are helpful for writing coaching?" No, we can't.
Educator tools and support. Gates-Zuck correctly notes that "effective" writing instruction requires time and resources, so the hope here is, I don't know-- the invention of a time machine? Hiring administrative assistants for all teachers? Of course not-- they want to create "tools" aka more technology trying to accomplish what it's not very good at accomplishing.
Peer-to-peer collaboration and feedback. I'm a little st8umped here, because this is both old hat and widely done. My best guess is the real question is "can we develop some software to get involved in this process."
Non-academic correlates. Gates-Zuck wants to attach the whole range of soft-skill SEL to writing instruction. "Can we develop evidence-based interventions" that help everything across the board "while protecting student privacy." Can we create some software that will teach students to be more human?
And the whole business should include continuous improvement. Always looking for ways to get better. Kind of like every decent teacher on the planet. I swear-- so much of this rich amateur hour baloney could be helped by having these guys shadow an actual teacher all day every day for a full year. At the very least, it would save these endless versions of "I imagine we could move things more easily if we used round discs attached to an axel. I call it... The Wheeble!"
But after listing all the fine print, we cut to the chase:
The goal is not to replace the classroom teacher, but rather to provide teachers with new integrated tools (including those involving peers working collaboratively) and supports (including well-designed professional development) to improve their ability to assess student performance and provide rapid and targeted feedback and remediation.
In other words, we're looking to build some software to teach writing (and How To Be Human).
Mathy Stuff
More test results stand in for evidence that math understanding and mindsets are in trouble right here in River City. There's a lot of math-related jargon here, but if we skip down a couple of pages, we get to the heart of the matter. First on the list of areas requiring exploration:
Tools and resources that support teachers to personalize the learning experience for all type of student learning needs:
Writing
The problem? College and career success (because we're still flogging that expired equine) are "highly dependent" on "effective" writing skills, which include "evaluation of arguments and evidence, critical and creative thinking about solutions and sources, identifying support for a key idea or process, plus clear and evocative argument making."
Gates-Zuck are going to ignore all of those qualities by basing their argument on NAEP writing test results to argue a lack of proficiency. Mind you, I agree that we have a writing proficiency problem, however, I blame it mostly on the test-driven school movement of the past 18 years. That doesn't make their list of obstacles, which includes a lack of time for sufficient practice and feedback because teachers are overloaded, and while computer scoring of essays "holds promise" (it doesn't), it can't help yet (and it never will). They also blame a lack of "high-quality writing assignments," whatever that is supposed to mean.
Here are the areas they believe "require more exploration"
Evidence-based solutions for writing instruction, including mastery of the "spectrum of skills encompassing narrative, descriptive, expository and/or persuasive writing models," a "spectrum" that I'll argue endlessly is not an actual thing, but is a fake construct created as a crutch for folks who don't know how to teach or assess writing.
New proficiency metrics. Can we have "consistent measures of student progress and proficiency"? I'm saying "probably not." "Can we use technology to support new, valid, efficient, and reliable writing performance measures that are helpful for writing coaching?" No, we can't.
Educator tools and support. Gates-Zuck correctly notes that "effective" writing instruction requires time and resources, so the hope here is, I don't know-- the invention of a time machine? Hiring administrative assistants for all teachers? Of course not-- they want to create "tools" aka more technology trying to accomplish what it's not very good at accomplishing.
Peer-to-peer collaboration and feedback. I'm a little st8umped here, because this is both old hat and widely done. My best guess is the real question is "can we develop some software to get involved in this process."
Non-academic correlates. Gates-Zuck wants to attach the whole range of soft-skill SEL to writing instruction. "Can we develop evidence-based interventions" that help everything across the board "while protecting student privacy." Can we create some software that will teach students to be more human?
And the whole business should include continuous improvement. Always looking for ways to get better. Kind of like every decent teacher on the planet. I swear-- so much of this rich amateur hour baloney could be helped by having these guys shadow an actual teacher all day every day for a full year. At the very least, it would save these endless versions of "I imagine we could move things more easily if we used round discs attached to an axel. I call it... The Wheeble!"
But after listing all the fine print, we cut to the chase:
The goal is not to replace the classroom teacher, but rather to provide teachers with new integrated tools (including those involving peers working collaboratively) and supports (including well-designed professional development) to improve their ability to assess student performance and provide rapid and targeted feedback and remediation.
In other words, we're looking to build some software to teach writing (and How To Be Human).
Mathy Stuff
More test results stand in for evidence that math understanding and mindsets are in trouble right here in River City. There's a lot of math-related jargon here, but if we skip down a couple of pages, we get to the heart of the matter. First on the list of areas requiring exploration:
Tools and resources that support teachers to personalize the learning experience for all type of student learning needs:
Once again, this personalized [sic] learning platform should also incorporate cognitive and affective state, continuous improvement, and be not boring. The list also calls for "informing, not automating," which is basically a call for a bigger, better data dashboard. Possible products of this research could be intelligent tutoring systems, technology-enhanced content, and artificial intelligence.
Yes, Gates-Zuck are ready to go all-in on personalized [sic] learning.
Which brings us to the third area:
Are you creeped out yet? Well, here's the first paragraph of this section:
Student success in academics and in future careers is associated with their ability to wrestle with multiple ideas at once, think flexibly, and regulate their actions and thoughts. These skills describe the basic executive functions (EFs) of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. Strong childhood EFs predict higher socio-economic status, better physical health, and fewer drug-related problems and criminal convictions in adulthood.
EFs have been shown to be measurable, malleable, and robustly associated with success across the lifespan.
Gates-Zuck are going to fix all the poor and deprived students of the country by putting them in front of some executive function software, so that we can get their cognitive skills and self-control to work the way the authors of the software think they should. They are going to track EF abilities, and they are going to mold them to what they "should" be. And these will involve "technology-enhanced programs in and outside of school."
The program will also measure EF qualities of the educator and environment, and take a look at the early "precursors" of these skills as well as looking at "neural underpinnings."
This is all extraordinarily creepy as all get-out. And the longer you look at it, the creepier it gets-- follow the links if you dare.
Reasons To Maybe Not Be Completely Creeped Out
This is personalized [sic] learning at its worst-- a kind of Big Brother on Steroids attempt to take over the minds, hearts, and lives of children for God-knows-what nefarious schemes. Only two things make me feel just the slightest bit better about this.
First of all, I'm not sure that Gates-Zuck are evil mad scientist types, cackling wickedly in their darkened laboratory. I'm more inclined to see them as feckless-but-rich-and-powerful computer nerds, who still believe that education is just an engineering problem that can be solved by properly designed sufficiently powered software. They're technocrats who think a bigger, better machine is the best way to fix human beings.
Second of all-- well, wait a minute. The two guys who have bombarded education with enough money to make a small island and who do not have a single clear-cut success to point to-- these guys think they've got it figured out this time? They have never yet figured out how to better educate the full range of ordinary students (nor ever figured out what "better educate" means) now think they can unlock the formula for better educating students with larger challenges?
This is like going to a circus and the announcer hollers that Evel Von Wheeble is going to jump his motorcycle over fifty buses, and you get very excited until you read the program and see that Von Wheeble previously attempted to jump over ten, twenty and twenty-five buses-- and he failed every time.
I suppose that we can also take some comfort in knowing that at this point, Gates-Zuck is just trying to round up people who think they can help them get over just one bus, and maybe everyone will just say, "I don't care how much money you have, this is patently ridicu--" No, who am I kidding. People will line up around the block to work on this. When you have Gates-Zuck type of money, nobody ever tells you to take a hike because you've failed too many times.
On top of that, while the edu-amateurs have no real successes to point at, they have done prodigious damage in their attempts. Gates became convinced that national standards would be awesome, and now we're all stuck with the shambling ghost of Common Core and the tests welded to it. Instead of jumping over the buses, they may well just drive a tank through all fifty of them, leaving twisted burned rubble in their wake.
Never mind. I don't feel any better about this. Gates and Zuckerberg continue to learn nothing about education, but it's the rest of us who keep having to pay their tuition.
Teacher Appreciation
It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and I'd like to say a few words about the teachers who have been important to me-- past, present and future. This list will not be inclusive, so apologies in advance to those I miss, but I have only so much time to type.
Past
There are many teachers who had a huge influence on my work.
When I was just in eighth grade, Mrs. O'Keefe showed me that an English teacher can incorporate just about any activity that involves words. We wrote and we created and we shared stuff in that class that made me excited to get to that room every day.
From my high school teachers, I picked up a variety of values about teaching. Mr. Ferrang showed me the power of waking up minds just by refusing to dumb things down for them. Mr. Eichholtz showed me that literature could be hugely exciting, and that you could form your own personal relationship with each work. Mr. Lore taught me about the power of high standards and expectations. Mr. Bianchi showed me the power of patience in a classroom (he also eventually left me his job when, in one of the best retirements stories ever, the day after his divorce was final, he hit the lottery for 75K and decided that was more than enough to fulfill his dream of sitting on the porch drinking beer and reading books). And my high school band director taught me most of what I know about leadership and courage and creating art and dealing with your mistakes.
In college, Dr. Frank taught me about the power of trusting students to search down their own path. And Dr. Zolbrod opened up a world of teaching possibilities for me while also modeling the gentlest and most supportive approach I've ever seen. The man could give you back a crappy C paper you had written and make you feel like a king who was going to do so much better next time.
Present
I work with a lot of good people, but some of the most influential teachers in my life are people I have only barely met, thanks to a whole world opened up by the blogging biz.
Jose and Mercedes have shown me so much about how a teacher can be a strong and powerful voice for the work-- while still doing it. The BATs and Educolor have demonstrated how to make a movement where before there was nothing, how to create a space and then fill it.
Future
I'm just about out the door here, and I appreciate folks like Stacy and Matt and Jamie and Steve and, well, the list goes on-- teachers who are in the beginning of their careers and will continue the work into the years ahead. My own former students who have picked up the torch and are running with it. All of them bring an energy and commitment to the work that demands respect. Plus, I'll mention the teacher I most appreciate-- my wife.
And somewhere out there are the teachers who will work with my grandchildren and with my young twins, and I'm already appreciating them.
The work is hard and important, and not everybody can do it. It matters that I have colleagues, near and far, who are doing that work, even in the face of obstacles that simply shouldn't exist. It's important that teachers have each others' backs, and that they raise each other up whenever they can.
Matching Acts
I have tried to adopt a new strategy in dealing with certain holidays. My problem with many holidays is that they come once a year. Why is that a problem? Years ago I talked to someone who worked at a extended care home for the elderly. "At Christmastime," she said, "We get so many people who want to come and sing and perform and reach out to our residents that we can barely schedule them in. Then by May, it's crickets."
We approach too many holidays, including things like birthdays, as a one-and-done business-- I've wished you a happy birthday and said something nice to you, so I don't have to be nice to you again for a whole year.
So I propose matching acts. By all means-- celebrate a birthday or send presents for Arbor Day. But then, at some other point of the year, do it again. Commit a matching act of appreciation.
So by all means, this week say or do or give something nice to a teacher. And then, find some other time this year to do it again. Reach out and lift up the people who have lifted you up over the years. And have a happy Teacher Appreciation Week.
Past
There are many teachers who had a huge influence on my work.
When I was just in eighth grade, Mrs. O'Keefe showed me that an English teacher can incorporate just about any activity that involves words. We wrote and we created and we shared stuff in that class that made me excited to get to that room every day.
From my high school teachers, I picked up a variety of values about teaching. Mr. Ferrang showed me the power of waking up minds just by refusing to dumb things down for them. Mr. Eichholtz showed me that literature could be hugely exciting, and that you could form your own personal relationship with each work. Mr. Lore taught me about the power of high standards and expectations. Mr. Bianchi showed me the power of patience in a classroom (he also eventually left me his job when, in one of the best retirements stories ever, the day after his divorce was final, he hit the lottery for 75K and decided that was more than enough to fulfill his dream of sitting on the porch drinking beer and reading books). And my high school band director taught me most of what I know about leadership and courage and creating art and dealing with your mistakes.
In college, Dr. Frank taught me about the power of trusting students to search down their own path. And Dr. Zolbrod opened up a world of teaching possibilities for me while also modeling the gentlest and most supportive approach I've ever seen. The man could give you back a crappy C paper you had written and make you feel like a king who was going to do so much better next time.
Present
I work with a lot of good people, but some of the most influential teachers in my life are people I have only barely met, thanks to a whole world opened up by the blogging biz.
Jose and Mercedes have shown me so much about how a teacher can be a strong and powerful voice for the work-- while still doing it. The BATs and Educolor have demonstrated how to make a movement where before there was nothing, how to create a space and then fill it.
Future
I'm just about out the door here, and I appreciate folks like Stacy and Matt and Jamie and Steve and, well, the list goes on-- teachers who are in the beginning of their careers and will continue the work into the years ahead. My own former students who have picked up the torch and are running with it. All of them bring an energy and commitment to the work that demands respect. Plus, I'll mention the teacher I most appreciate-- my wife.
And somewhere out there are the teachers who will work with my grandchildren and with my young twins, and I'm already appreciating them.
The work is hard and important, and not everybody can do it. It matters that I have colleagues, near and far, who are doing that work, even in the face of obstacles that simply shouldn't exist. It's important that teachers have each others' backs, and that they raise each other up whenever they can.
Matching Acts
I have tried to adopt a new strategy in dealing with certain holidays. My problem with many holidays is that they come once a year. Why is that a problem? Years ago I talked to someone who worked at a extended care home for the elderly. "At Christmastime," she said, "We get so many people who want to come and sing and perform and reach out to our residents that we can barely schedule them in. Then by May, it's crickets."
We approach too many holidays, including things like birthdays, as a one-and-done business-- I've wished you a happy birthday and said something nice to you, so I don't have to be nice to you again for a whole year.
So I propose matching acts. By all means-- celebrate a birthday or send presents for Arbor Day. But then, at some other point of the year, do it again. Commit a matching act of appreciation.
So by all means, this week say or do or give something nice to a teacher. And then, find some other time this year to do it again. Reach out and lift up the people who have lifted you up over the years. And have a happy Teacher Appreciation Week.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Things For Which I'd Trade a Donut
It's Teacher Appreciation Day, and all across America, teachers are being treated to donuts and notepads and cookies and maybe a nice email from administration. I don't for one minute want to seem ungrateful for these things-- my administration is setting out some food in the lounge Thursdeay and I will be more than happy to accept that expression of appreciation by stuffing it in my mouth hole.
But like many teachers, I have mixed feelings about this day and the week of which it's a part.
I like donuts, and I like the thoughtfulness behind those appreciation donuts, but here are some of the things for which I would trade those donuts--
* Voters who stopped casting their votes for anti-education candidates for office. I don't care what party-- just stop voting for people who neither understand nor appreciate this country's system of public education. Stop voting for people who think teachers are overpaid layabouts. Stop voting for people who think public education is one more government program that should be shrunk until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub.
* Policies that support public education instead of attacking it, dismantling it, and privatizing it.
* Policies that show respect for teachers instead of assuming that anyone with a pulse can be stuck in a classroom with good results.
* An end to the use of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of teacher quality.
* An end to the assumption that all teachers probably stink unless they can prove otherwise.
* Respect for the profession that runs so deep that policy-makers never launch a piece of policy without saying, "Well, we can't make a move on this without consulting some actual teachers." Or even-- and now I'm just fantasizing wildly-- policymakers who say, "Well, we can't possibly write this policy without teachers in the room with us. In fact, maybe we should just leave them in the room and we'll wait outside."
* Pay levels for teachers that, at a minimum, reflect the actual market value of the job and, at a maximum, reflect an honest desire to recruit and retain really good people to the profession.
* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of educational effectiveness.
* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of student learning.
* Hell, just get rid of the damned tests.
* Someone from the front office walks down to a teacher's classroom to say, "What can we in administration do to help you do your job?"
* Also, if my donut could have sprinkles on it, that would be cool.
I like donuts, and I like the thoughtfulness behind those appreciation donuts, but here are some of the things for which I would trade those donuts--
* A really nice chair and desk, maybe even located in a personal space. Teachers are the only professionals who can look enviously at cubicle dwellers.
* Voters who stopped casting their votes for anti-education candidates for office. I don't care what party-- just stop voting for people who neither understand nor appreciate this country's system of public education. Stop voting for people who think teachers are overpaid layabouts. Stop voting for people who think public education is one more government program that should be shrunk until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub.
* Policies that support public education instead of attacking it, dismantling it, and privatizing it.
* Policies that show respect for teachers instead of assuming that anyone with a pulse can be stuck in a classroom with good results.
* An end to the use of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of teacher quality.
* An end to the assumption that all teachers probably stink unless they can prove otherwise.
* Respect for the profession that runs so deep that policy-makers never launch a piece of policy without saying, "Well, we can't make a move on this without consulting some actual teachers." Or even-- and now I'm just fantasizing wildly-- policymakers who say, "Well, we can't possibly write this policy without teachers in the room with us. In fact, maybe we should just leave them in the room and we'll wait outside."
* Pay levels for teachers that, at a minimum, reflect the actual market value of the job and, at a maximum, reflect an honest desire to recruit and retain really good people to the profession.
* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of educational effectiveness.
* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of student learning.
* Hell, just get rid of the damned tests.
* Someone from the front office walks down to a teacher's classroom to say, "What can we in administration do to help you do your job?"
* Also, if my donut could have sprinkles on it, that would be cool.
Monday, May 7, 2018
South Carolina's Teacher Walkout
South Carolina is currently making a point that I've tried to make elsewhere-- the teacher walkouts in Arizona and Colorado and Kentucky and West Virginia [and Oklahoma] and (soon) North Carolina are not new. There's been a teacher walkout going on for a decade. But since the teachers haven't been walking out al at once, we've been calling it a shortage instead.
The State in Columbia, South Carolina is running a series of articles (also being run in several other McClatchy newspapers)* about the slow motion walkout.
South Carolina has also been involved in a trend that I first noticed being reported four years ago-- the outsourcing of teaching jobs. Recruitment was targeting Filipino teachers back then, but Self and Cody Dulaney report that South Carolina is now searching internationally, bringing in people who have no US passport and no teaching degree to take SC teaching jobs. International hires now make up 7% of the teaching force, part of a "cultural exchange," and not permanent hires. In addition to the Philippines, SC is drawing from Jamaica and India. That 7% statewide means that individual districts have substantial numbers. Hampton school district is employing 21 international teachers-- that's 36% of its teaching staff. Williamsburg has 79 international teachers.
But when we turn to big-picture stories like "Why SC teachers are leaving in record numbers," what's striking is that the problems listed are exactly the same issues that have led to teacher strikes in other states
"They're so tied up and worried about all the paperwork that needs to be done that they're unable to actually do the job that they applied for, which is educating children," said Natasha Jefferson, a Charleston mom worried about the education her eighth-grader is receiving. Two of his classes are taught by a rotating cast of substitute teachers.
Jennifer Garrett of the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement has some thoughts about the attempt to draw teachers from other states and countries:
We're not going to recruit ourselves out of this teacher shortage. Statistically, it's not possible to fill the gaps.
Self interviewed over three dozen current and former educators. Many asked not to be named, which all by itself tells you something about the atmosphere in SC schools. All of the complaints are familiar.
Pay too low to support a family.
Emphasis on the standardized test.
Endless meetings about administrivia and test prep, rather than a chance to work on the actual work.
The story of Theresa Schlosser includes an out-of-control first grader that she could not help, but that was not the main reason she left teaching:
An administrator saying, "'Don't worry, you'll teach them how to pass the test.,'" pushed her over her limit one day, she said.
"I had to go out in the hall and cry," Schlosser said, who is now a stay-at-home mom. "I didn't sign up for this, to teach somebody to pass a test."
South Carolina actually has a program that allows retirees to be pulled back into the classroom while still benefitting from their pension-- but that program ends soon, and a $10K limit on what retirees can earn will push many of them back out again.
And running through all the complaints, the refrain that "we are set up for failure" and a sense of powerlessness. Says Caleb Surface, who dropped out of the teaching pipeline while still in college. "Being able to enact change in the education system is not a task remotely accessible inside the classroom."
Low pay. Low benefits. Lack of power. Lack of resources. A focus on things other than actually doing the work of educating students. And a messy charter system that is not getting results, but is still draining money from the public system.
South Carolina lost almost 7,000 teachers last year. 1 in 20 SC teachers left the profession entirely. Teachers in the college pipeline have dropped by 30% in four years.
These are all the same factors that teachers are talking about in states with teacher strikes, but there are two critical differences. Because South Carolina's teachers are leaving one at a time-- or just seeking another career to begin with-- they aren't getting the same kind of attention as teachers in Arizona or West Virginia. The other difference is the bigger problem-- when the teachers of Arizona and West Virginia walked out, they did so with an announced willingness to come back to the classroom. But the exiting teachers of South Carolina are leaving, one by one, for good.
In short, legislators in states like South Carolina may consider themselves lucky that they aren't facing a full-out strike, but they are mistaken. Slow motion walkouts are harder to fix, easier to ignore, and permanent. States like South Carolina would be lucky to have a "real" strike, because it would force them to deal with the issues behind their fake teacher shortage. As it is, unless some leaders really step up, they will watch their education system bleed to death one drop at a time.
*I originally ran across the series in the News&Observer, but failed to notice that Self and Dulaney are connected to The State. This has been edited to correct my original mistake.
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